devoursjohnlock:

may-shepard:

My first take on that Gatiss interview post is, hey everyone, before you get upset, try to listen for yourself. The post is not the interview, perspective is everything, and although I am really grateful to @lament4sherlock for drawing our attention to the interview (thanks again, sweetheart!), second hand reportage of a conversation risks invoking the telephone game.

I had a half dozen people tell me that Sherlock is Garbage, Here’s Why video would convince me that the whole show was, well, garbage, but I watched it and it turned out that the guy had a single point of complaint about how the show wasn’t one off stories just like acd wrote, and it wasn’t about the cases, which he found Wrong, but, well, we knew that already, and we liked it. (Somehow, he stretched this single point of complaint out over an hour and a half.) I thought Sherlock is Garbage was funny, but also a huge shrug, and it ultimately didn’t change my opinion about the show.

I haven’t listened to the Gatiss interview yet, but I prefer to form my own opinion, and so should you.

My initial response is, I can spot several blatant untruths in the summarised points–can you? I also in no way would ever expect a creator to talk about their work in such an apparently denigrating way? Seems…well, fucky is such an overused word, isn’t it?

Also, do I spy a creator confirmation that their Sherlock is gay? That’s new.

Anyway, I’m not making predictions and I’m not falling back on They Lie because who knows what they do? Just saying, don’t let it wreck your day.

@may-shepard I’ve listened to it, and here are a couple of things:

– Some of the things on that list were not in the interview at all, as far as I can tell. Was Mary ever mentioned? If so, I missed it.

– I didn’t hear any admission that Holmes was gay in TPLOSH, only that it’s his and Moffat’s favourite and that his Mycroft came from there, which is stuff we know already.

– He made some really blatant contradictions, like (1) the thing one adaptation of The Hounds of Baskerville got so horribly wrong was Holmes shooting up in a bathroom (?) during a case due to addiction, and in TLD they literally have Sherlock shooting up in a bathroom during a case due to addiction; and (2) A Case of Identity being unadaptable as a case, even though they did adapt it as a case in TEH and arguably it’s an allegory for the entire Mary/John/Sherlock dynamic that they’re presenting.

– He seriously suggests that if the series were 60-minute episodes, they would have had to do “bottle episodes” in which Mrs Hudson and Lestrade solve crimes together. This is ridiculous.

– A second reference to Doctor Who: Empress of Mars being a Bank Holiday adaptation, which it most certainly is not, although The Lying Detective is (I know this is self-promotion, but please read this meta if you haven’t already).

Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, this interview is just business as usual.

Here’s a direct streaming link, if you want to listen: https://www.acast.com/astabinthedark/markgatiss-helenejoy